


Just a Game

by draculard



Category: The Uninvited (2009)
Genre: Breathplay, Choking, Drowning, F/F, Ghost Sex, Light BDSM, Masochism, Rope Bondage, Sibling Incest, Temperature Play, Torture Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 12:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18446921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Can Anna really be a victim when she wants nothing more than to play?





	Just a Game

When they were little, they played a game called Hocus Pocus. It was Alex’s idea; that game has invaded all of Anna’s earliest childhood memories. She remembers squatting, barefoot, to dig a hole in the earth with her chubby little hands. She remembers Alex lugging an old metal bucket up from the lake, sloshing water into the hole, bits of fresh-mixed mud splashing on Anna’s arms and legs.

The first part of the game was all about the potion. They dug a hole, they filled it with water. Alex raced back and forth from the hole in the ground to the woods on the edge of their yard, bringing back oak leaves, cicada shells, berries, mushrooms, bits of bark. Anna stood sentinel by the hole — the cauldron — and plucked handfuls of grass out of the yard, dropping them into the sludge.

They mixed it all together with a big stick Anna found — there was never any shortage of big sticks. She remembers using the stick to force floating leaves below the surface, mixing everything up until it was a semi-solid mess, until all the colors had faded away or been covered completely by mud.

Then it was time for part two of the game.

Alex fetched a wicker basket from the house. Anna can’t remember how that basket came to be part of Hocus Pocus; it must have been a natural progression, but for the life of her, she can’t remember the steps. Together, they dipped the edge of the basket into the potion, let it seep inside, filled the basket up with handfuls of mud and damp pine needles.

They carried the basket to the lake, with Anna’s left hand on the handle and Alex’s right hand next to hers. It swung between them with sludge dripping slowly from the bottom, landing on their feet in huge globs. By then, the sun had dried most of the mud on Anna’s skin, leaving a hard, grey crust that she itched to peel off. But that wasn’t part of the game.

They walked into the lake, bare feet in cool water, minnows pecking at their toes.

“You first,” Alex always said, and Anna always said,

“Aww, I don’t want to. _You_ go first.”

But Alex would say, “What are you, a pussy?” and Anna would comply, partially out of embarrassment, partially out of fear that Mom would hear Alex using a bad word and come thundering down the hill to spoil their game.

So they held the basket over Anna’s head and she put her lips to the mud-soaked bottom and sucked the potion down through the little wicker straps. She tasted the grit of tree bark and the crushed carapace of a cicada and the acidic taste of grass, all of it winding its way between her baby teeth, coating her tongue, sliding down her throat against her will. But she didn't gag; she swallowed it. She always swallowed it.

And then it was time for part three.

* * *

 _If you drink the potion, you can breathe underwater._ That was the rule, and Anna always believed it. She walks down to the lake at night, alone in the moonlight, her nightdress too short to keep the breeze off her legs.

What would Alex say, if she were here? Would she try to stop her? Would she grab Anna’s arms and yank her away from the water, would she dig her feet into the sand and dew-wet grass and pull Anna to safety?

Or would she make Anna drink the potion first?

Would she say, _What are you, a pussy?_

* * *

Every child plays these games. Some kids tie each other up — they take their jump ropes and they go into the woods where their parents (or babysitters) can’t see, and they choose a victim from their herd. They wrap the rope around the victim’s chest, around the trunk of a tree. They dig it in tight. Maybe they take the victim’s clothes off first, or maybe they wait until the jump rope is cinched and knotted, and then they satisfy themselves with just removing the pants.

Some girls don’t play potions, and they don’t play tie up. Some girls play the choking game. Some sisters, both dark-haired and slender, kneel on each other’s beds in the dark and wrap their little fingers around each other’s necks. One sister puts her knees on either side of the other sister’s waist and holds her down. She squeezes tight enough to leave bruises. She squeezes and squeezes until her victim is blue in the face, until her victim passes out — until that strange, exciting spot between her legs starts tingling.

Some girls hold their fingers over burning matches. Some girls put those matches out against their best friend’s skin.

Some girls dare each other to jump from the loft of the barn into the stack of hay below, and when one refuses to jump, she’s pushed, and she screams all the way down and maybe she cries and nurses a new bruise, a new cut, a freshly broken bone. But she still plays the game.

Can Anna really be a victim when she wants nothing more than to play?

* * *

Their game isn’t as bad as other girls’. Anna drinks the potion, and Alex does, too, and one by one they lay down in the water with their backs against the slimy, gravel-filled lake-bottom. Their heads go underwater and the sounds of the world are suddenly blotted out.

Above her head, Anna sees reeds sticking up past the surface of the water. She sees her own hair floating high above her, and the sun coming down in spotty, wavering rays.

Part three of the game is to hold your breath, and hold it as long as you can. Anna blinks up at the reeds, at her hair, at the surface, at the sun. She hears her heartbeat thumping in her ears. She looks to the left and there is Alex staring back at her with a tight-lipped smile and tiny bubbles of air coming from her nose.

It’s important not to break surface first.

Anna always breaks surface first.

She always loses the game.

* * *

Alex always said the lake was full of ghosts.

She said it was full of sea monsters, too — and corpses of people Mom and Dad killed and threw in the water — and vampires, sometimes, and gigantic spiders, and sharks. But none of those stuck in Anna’s head the way the ghosts did. When they played the game as kids, she would keep her eyes open so she could see everything.

The minnows, the sun reflecting off the water, the hair floating above her head, the ghosts. But there never were any.

Now it’s different.

The water is cool; it’s not yet warm enough to swim, even during the day, and temperatures drop so low at night that Anna would be better off huddled in bed with a blanket wrapped around her, or sitting at the edge of a bonfire in shorts and a hoodie with the fire glowing off her bare legs.

Fantasies, really. She slips into the water, lets it cover her feet, her ankles, her knees. It’s cold, but not like ice — like a balm. The hem of her nightdress hits the water and she watches it darken as it soaks, floating on the surface even as she goes deeper.

The sand oozes between her toes; the weeds wrap around her calves, pulling her below the surface. When she goes below the surface, twisting onto her back to stare up at the sky, she’s farther out in the lake than she ever went when she played this game as a child.

All sound fades away except her heartbeat, a sensation so familiar it feels like breathing, even though her lungs have already started to burn. Her hair is longer now than it was when she was five, but it’s tied in a bun, and the loose strands floating above her head are few. What she sees now — what she didn’t see when she was just a girl — is the white, translucent material of her nightdress floating free from her body. The gentle night-time waves of the lake bring the skirt close enough to brush her skin and then pull it away again.  

She turns her head. She sees dark hair and full lips and green eyes staring back at her — a girl in a soaked-through nightgown that’s sticking to her skin, a girl with a mischievous smile and air bubbles leaking from her mouth and pink nipples visible through her dress.

A reflection. A ghost. A girl who holds her finger to her lips and winks. A girl who floats closer to Anna with every gentle wave, until her cold skin is touching Anna’s, until her fingers are in Anna’s messy, tied-back hair. Her legs come up around Anna’s waist, and with both their skirts buoyed by the current, it’s nothing but bare skin against bare skin.

Is it possible to kiss a ghost? Her lips meet Alex’s, and suddenly she is tied to a tree; she’s jumping from the hay loft in Grandpa’s barn; she’s pressing a burning match to the heel of her palm; she’s in bed with Alex straddling her, with Alex’s hands around her neck, lightheaded and exhilarated and aroused.

Anna can’t breathe.

She breaks the surface.


End file.
